An Old School Laptop - the Hermes Baby Typewriter

Today, we are accustomed to Apple being the dominant company in terms of industrial design. Products like the iPod, iPhone, and iPad are sleek and nearly perfect in terms of design simplicity and ergonomics. But, great design and portability have been shown by other companies in other eras. 

In my closet, I have a typewriter that looks like an Apple product.  It's a Swiss-made Hermes Baby typewriter.  It's a product of the 1940s with a sleek, low profile, design and perfect portability.

Hermes Baby typewriter

 The Hermes Baby was the lightest typewriter of its era.  According to the "History of Hermes Typewriters" on vintagetypewriterjewelry.com It was reputed to be the preferred typewriter of great writers like Ernest Hemingway and John Steinbeck.  Even today, some modern writers prefer to use this typewriter.

The keys in this Hermes Baby typewriter look like spectators around an arena.

I enjoy the lightweight and precision look of my Hermes typewriter.  It's just plain cool and easy to type on.  Of course, in this era of computers and whisper quiet printers, a typewriter is just a tad loud.  Even though the era of the typewriter has passed, this timeless design lives on.

Up Close with the Hermes

If you need a typewriter ribbon for an Hermes typewriter, this one should work:

Introducing my Dirt Cheap Audio Blog

As my interests in various retro technologies evolve, I've found myself writing more and more about old stereo stuff than other retro stuff on this blog. I like to keep this blog eclectic, but sometimes I have to follow my passions. Thus, I've created a new blog called Dirt Cheap Audio Blog.

This new blog will be entirely dedicated to inexpensive audio equipment like vintage stereos, compact stereos, radios, and the like. It will be a mix of thrift store finds, ebay finds, and good deals in consumer electronics. In the new blog, I'll focus more on the evolution of a 2 channel stereo than anything else.

The new blog will free up this blog to re-focus back on a mix of retro goodness!